Gary Sheffield Talks About the Dwindling Number of Black Players in MLB and Kneeling for the National Anthem

An honest conversation with one of baseball's most outspoken personalities.

It appears unlikely that nine-time Major League Baseball All-Star Gary Sheffield is going to be enshrined in the Baseball Hall-of-Fame, which is too bad. He could’ve had the best, most succinct plaque in league Cooperstown history: “Sheff didn’t take shit from anybody.”

Sheffield played for eight teams, including the 1997 World Series champion Florida Marlins, and finished his 22-year career with 509 home runs, 1,676 RBIs, and a low strikeout rate for a power hitter. Dude could always rake, but the numbers don’t capture the swag. Sheffield’s bat wiggle into the wicked speed of a most ferocious swing made him one of baseball’s most entertaining dong-crushers, wall mountings be damned.

Throughout his career, Sheffield was always a good quote: outspoken, brash, deferential to nobody, and yes, especially early-on, a royal pain in the ass. (Upon leaving the Brewers, a self-inflicted verbal error haunted him for years.) As a player, he may have never been a favorite of dads in Dockers who “want the game played the right way,” but post-career, speaking his mind has made him a hell of a studio analyst. Throughout the National League playoffs, he’ll be part of the engaging TBS pre-and-post game team along with Pedro Martinez, Jimmy Rollins, and host Casey Stern. Coverage begins tomorrow night with the Wild Card game between the Colorado Rockies and Arizona Diamondbacks in Phoenix at 8 P.M.

Prior to the Big Baseball Dance, Sheffield spoke to GQ about the dwindling number of black MLBers, intentionally distorting Colin Kaepernick’s protest, the dinger-or-whiff plate approach, and the sweet smell of a Sheff stogie.

GQ: This season was the 70th anniversary of Jackie Robinson integrating baseball, but there were only 62 African-American ballplayers on opening day rosters and disabled lists, 7.1 percent, the lowest percentage since 1958. Eleven teams have one black player, and two teams, the Colorado Rockies and San Diego Padres, one of your former clubs, didn’t have a single black player. Why has baseball had such a precipitous drop in black players?

Gary Sheffield: I’m not surprised at all. A decade ago, I saw it coming and said this was going to happen, but everyone thought I was just throwing stuff out there. When I was coming up, there wasn’t a day scouts weren’t coming into our hood to find guys with big arms like Doc Gooden and Floyd Youmans, and big bats like me. They invested time getting to know the kids. They watched their school and work habits, so they would know a kid’s character and if they’d be able to take a chance on drafting them. All that’s gone with travel ball and AAU, which turns it around. The kid has to find the scout.

There’s also an infatuation with players born outside the United States. Teams would rather pay a $20-million posting fee just to talk to an Asian player, then sign him to an $80-million contract, but in two years the league figures him out. To me, that money isn’t worth it. At least put those guys through a draft like players from the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, and spend more on guys in your own backyard.

Is there any way, MLB can reverse the problem with so few black players, or is the game settled on being less than 10 percent African-American?

Believe it or not, It’s going to live lower than that. Travel and AAU ball, which is too expensive, is here to stay. If scouts didn’t see me, I never would have gotten the opportunities I’ve had. I’m helping create a $100-million complex so underprivileged kids can compete against rich kids in all kinds of sports. I’m working with the state and local authorities in Florida. We have land to build on the old Cincinnati Reds spring training site in Plant City. We’re going to build baseball, football, soccer fields, and an indoor track-and-field facility. Everything these kids need to stay off the streets and be seen.

So far, only one player, Oakland A’s catcher Bruce Maxwell, has taken a knee in solidarity with Colin Kaepernick’s protest. Do you think, in comparison to the NFL and the NBA, there’s something specific to the lack of MLB activism?

When I was a kid, you had all these guys, athletes like Jim Brown, Muhammad Ali, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, following Dr. Martin Luther King. I’ll only speak for baseball, but nowadays we don’t have an Ali. We don’t even have the personalities of my generation and the one before me. Baseball has become so soldier-like, bow your head type stuff.

"Baseball has become so soldier-like, bow your head type stuff."

In light of all that, for decades MLB players didn’t stand for the flag. You’d have guys in the locker room eating, stretching in the bullpen, sitting in the dugout, players were spread out all over the field. There was no idea of ‘unity.” Only the Braves and Yankees made it mandatory to stand on the top step of the dugout. That was the only time I even paid attention.

What are your personal thoughts on taking a knee?

People trying to make it out like Kap took a knee because of the flag, but it’s about something going on in the black community with cops killing young black kids and getting away with it. People distort that message to throw people off it and not deal with the problem. It’s like confronting a little kid who’s in trouble, they lash out and talk back, because the kid doesn’t want to talk about or deal with the issue at hand.

People already forget but at first, Kaepernick sat during the national anthem. A Green Beret who played in the NFL said it was disrespectful. They talked, Kap listened, and decided to take the position players take when someone gets hurt and they’re praying for him. On a knee. Out of respect. Once again, the lesson has been distorted.

You're right, I’d completely forgotten that happened.

America does it on a consistent basis. I constantly shake my head.

Let’s switch to baseball. Fans and the media love to celebrate players who stay with one team their whole career, but I’m fascinated by guys who play for a bunch of teams and get to live and know a bunch of different cities, cultures, etc. Was playing for eight teams cool?

It was the best experience and the best thing for me. I get bored when things always stay the same, I like new challenges. If a situation gets too easy, or comfortable, for me, it doesn’t work. I tell my kids, ‘If you’re on a traveling team, blowing everybody out, and you only get one at-bat, what have you learned?’ Nothing. I played on teams that were already great, and ones that needed me to make them better. People always assume playing for eight teams was a negative, that something had to be wrong, but it was a blessing. I need the pressure to keep me going.

There’s an even simpler reason I moved a lot. If you look at my history, every team I was on, besides my first team in Milwaukee, I couldn’t stay because of money reasons. LeBron and these NBA guys figured out what I caught onto back then, if you ain’t going to pay me what I’m worth, I’m getting the higher dollar somewhere else. Why would I bleed Dodger blue? Or bleed Yankee blue? Or bleed anybody’s blue if you aren’t taking care of me? Only team that ever did that was the Florida Marlins, making me the highest-paid player in the history of sports. Guess what? I helped bring the Marlins a World Series title. But if I’m one of the best, or the best, on the team and I’m paid less than someone on the team who isn’t at my level, I’m not all-in. I’m not buying the system. I’ll do my job, go home, and that’s it.

Is that a pride thing, or more of a straight dollars-and-cents thing?

It’s a principle thing. Everybody has pride. I certainly do, but this is a principle for me. You take care of me, I’ll deliver. But I’m not the type of person to go do something just because you tell me to.

This season saw a new all-time high in home runs, and one theory is that the balls are juiced. You know from power, so are they?

I would never make a statement I don't know a fact to, so can’t say. What I do know is almost every park today is smaller. I use to say nobody from Colorado should ever win the MVP because of how the ball carries, but all the new stadiums made it equal. Yankee Stadium, Philadelphia, Houston… All bandboxes. Pop flies leave the yard. Homers are way up? Start with how far the fences have been moved in, even the Mets, who supposedly wanted a pitcher’s park, did it. (Laughs) 600 at-bats and all I’m doing is swinging for the short seats? I could’ve gone for 80.

There are two massive bombers playing on your former teams: Giancarlo Stanton, who with 59 shattered your single-season Marlin home run record of 42, and the Yankees Aaron Judge, who broke Mark McGwire’s rookie tater mark with 52. What do you think of these dueling bombers?

It’s a beautiful thing. Fans love guys hitting big home runs, I love guys hitting big home runs. Moonshots are great. God didn’t bless me to be 6’6” or I would’ve hit more… No, I love both these kids. I talked to Yankees assistant hitting coach Marcus Thames during the off-season, and tips I offered about Judge were relayed to him. The Marlins tried to bring me in every year to work with Stanton, but it never happened because that management is so crazy, always inconsistent about what they wanted. Both guys figured it out. I can’t wait to see what comes next.

The yin to the home run yang is the strikeout, which are up for the 10th straight season—Judge and Stanton have combined for more than 360. You averaged 74 a season, solid for a slugger, but K’s are here to stay, no?

Exactly right. The game has changed. Back in the day, pitchers like Greg Maddux, John Smoltz, Roger Clemens were thinking through how to pitch an entire game. They weren’t trying to strike everybody out for five innings.

I’m impressed with a guy like Ichiro who never strikes out, uses speed to get his base hits, one component of the game that’s sexy. Other great hitters could easily do it if they want to. When I went to the Padres, I won a batting title because I wasn’t thinking about hitting home runs or driving in runs, just getting hits. Mark McGwire wasn’t a complete player. Being an all-or-nothing guy is the easiest thing in the world, if you don’t care about striking out or driving in a guy from second with a base hit. It’s the trend in baseball, but the problem is, runs count the same in every inning.

Let me ask you about a couple of specific teams, starting with the Dodgers. They were on a record-setting win pace and went into a late season freefall. Where do they stand?

They're gonna be fine. Every spring training, even on the best teams, the manager tells the club, “We’re going to lose sixty games, it’s what you do with the rest of ‘em.” Going into this last weekend, the Dodgers had to lose all three just to get to sixty. That’s special. I love how manager Dave Roberts got Yasiel Puig to buy into what they’re doing by letting him be himself. The Dodgers confused Puig in years past by telling him to dial it down. Yes, you have Cody Bellinger and Corey Seager hitting all these home runs, but the key to me, has been Puig. He had a decent offensive year, not a great year, but he contributed with defense and energy.

As a Mets fan, I was already pulling for the Astros so Carlos Beltran can get a ring, but after Hurricane Harvey, has Houston become the sentimental favorite?

I picked the Astros before the season. They would be the feel-good story of the playoffs, but I’ve been reconsidering since mid-season because the Cleveland Indians are the most balanced team in the league. They’re good at all facets of the game and don’t leave a lot of loose change on the basepaths. But then Astros traded for Justin Verlander, a legitimate ace, the kind that wins twice a series, neutralizes and demoralizes other teams. I played with Verlander in Detroit, he’s a guy who will preserve himself if he doesn’t have nothing to pitch for. Like me, staying in one place too long, I can’t dig deep because I’m bored. Don’t get me wrong, Verlander plays hard, competing at 91-93 mph, occasional breaking ball, but whatever happens happens. Now he goes to a contending team, and his fastball is back up to 98 mph, setting up those breaking pitches. He’s 5-0 with a 1.06 ERA in Houston. Untouchable.

Fans do love feel good stories.

Curious as to how you got involved with cigars.

I grew up on the other side of the freeway in Tampa, away from the nice neighborhood. As kids, we would walk to Ybor City where a lot of Cubans and Latinos were rolling cigars all the time. I use to go hang out, and my Mom and Dad said, ‘What are you doing over there? You’re to young for cigars.’ I was infatuated with how you could roll a cigar and then smoke it. It smelled like.. victory.

After I hit my 500th home run, I met Rocky Patel, who said it would be an honor to make my cigar. Here’s this Indian dude from Green Bay, a huge Packers fan, who said he loved me when I was on the Brewers. I said, ‘You probably was the only one.’ We’ve been friends ever since.

Who will be lighting up a Gary Sheffield World Series victory cigar?

It’s still a little early for that… I will say in the National League, I actually think the Dodgers are built for a full season, not the playoffs. In a short series, great pitching usually wins out. I think it’ll be the Cubs.

An in the American League, like I said, first, I picked the Astros, but I switched to the Indians. have to see how a few things play out.

Astros or Indians vs. the Cubs? C’mon, who is it?

You really gonna put me on the spot like that? Alright. I’m with you, I’m going for Beltran.